Week 151

Crowded: Episode 1 is finally released! Subscribe to the podcast now! Episode 2 is currently being edited on MinimumNoise and should be along shortly. I also started collecting audio for Episode 3, but I have been having so many problems with PubClip (which I am using to gather the audio from the MT workers) that I am thinking that I have to change to a custom solution. None of the problems are the fault of PubClip – I am just using it in a way that they probably didn’t intend. The audio quality is horrible. I have been getting some complaints from the wonderful audio professionals at MinimumNoise (where I am crowdsourcing the editing of the show) saying that they can’t do anything with such low-quality audio. I looked at Skype as a possible solution and signed up for a voicemail plan, but for various reasons this didn’t work out. Then, after spending four hours trying to get Red5 – a media server for Flash that would allow me to create a little Flash recording tool – running on my server, I gave up and realizes that I knew the answer all the time. When in doubt, crowdsource. Rent-a-coder, I hope you come through on this one.

TV of Tomorrow is finally over. Overall, the experience was okay. We didn’t meet anyone who was interested in our project, and the entire festival (our presentation included) was plagued with technical difficulties leading to extremely poor image quality from the projectors.

I was very excited to find out yesterday that I was accepted to the Minneapolis Art On Wheels residency program. So from May 17th to June 6th, I will be up in The City of Lakes (? – no good nicknames). Phun Phact: Minnesota is known on its license plates as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” but Minnesota actually has 12,000 lakes. Unfortunately, class at Bennington doesn’t end until May 24 — not sure how this one got by me, but I will make it work somehow.

Immediately before that, from May 14th-16th, I will be traveling to my home town, Baltimore, to the Megalopolis Audio Festival. I will be presenting Crowded.

The torch video is kind of crashing and burning at the moment. We got a few good contributions from some awesome people out there (post one and post two), but unfortunately it just wasn’t enough. We are thinking about scrapping the whole idea and using clips from famous “running” scenes in movies instead of the crowdsourced videos. Shame.